Anna Maria, once again a’growing

The varsity football AmCats notched their first win earlier this month, though the story behind the field is just as important as the story on it.

Football has only been played at Anna Maria College for two years, and the stadium is still brand new. Under construction behind the north end zone is another newcomer, a $4 million locker room and fitness center to serve athletes and to serve notice: Anna Maria College is back on solid footing and expanding for the future.

“We want to get bigger but we also want to get better,” said college President Jack P. Calareso. “We want to make sure students who come here have every reason to succeed.”

The past four years, there has always been a construction project on campus — including an $11 million, 200-bed dormitory, and a plan for library renovations next year. Student population in that time has grown rapidly, but last summer Anna Maria announced that because of a drop in projected enrollment, it would cut salaries, freeze “nonessential” hiring and potentially eliminate positions and programs. The college could have increased enrollment by admitting under-qualified students, Mr. Calareso said, but chose not to.

Enrollment rebounded naturally before the start of the fall semester, and the college has been able to reverse most of those cuts, said Paula Green, a college vice president. The school’s 3 percent cuts in salaries have been restored, and the college is again contributing to its employees’ retirement plans.

The college endowment has grown 400 percent in the past four years, to $5 million — nowhere near the size of schools such as Harvard or Holy Cross, Mr. Calareso said, but large enough to reduce lending rates for construction. Full-time faculty has grown from about 40 to close to 60. Enrollment, about 800 five years ago, is now close to 1,500. The number of students living on campus has tripled, from 200 to 600.

With the increased number of students living on campus, Anna Maria has outgrown the fitness center it built just four years ago. The new athletics building will give student-athletes a separate facility to relieve demand on the gym in the Fuller Activities Center.

Although the school has undergone massive changes under Mr. Calareso’s leadership, Sister Rollande Quintal said it remains focused on the mission chosen by the Sisters of St. Anne in 1946.

“The goal always has been for Anna Maria that we prepare and graduate young women and men to be living witnesses to an ethical and values-based education. That hasn’t changed over the years,” said Sister Rollande, the college’s dean of mission effectiveness and a 1962 graduate.

She noted that when Anna Maria opened as a women’s college in 1946, many of its students were the first in their families to attend a university. Today, with a community-building program for first-year students and the summer “Bridge” program to prepare students culturally for college, 40 percent of students are first-generation college students.

The college built its Paxton campus in the early 1950s and began admitting men in 1973.

Mr. Calareso said faculty involvement in student life is a hallmark of the Anna Maria experience.

“If you want to go to college and hide, don’t come here,” he said. “You walk around the campus and everybody knows your name. That happens because of the nature of the institution.”

Though enrollment has nearly doubled in a half-decade span, the school’s standards are as high as ever, Mr. Calareso said.

The school’s acceptance rate has actually dropped from 90 percent or more to 60 percent or so, but “applications have gone up astronomically. … As more students look at Anna Maria, it means more highly qualified students look. Every year we raise the bar slightly.

“If you were to walk around the region five years ago and ask about Anna Maria, you’d have found a lot of people didn’t know who we were,” Mr. Calareso said. “It’s really been a concerted effort to market the institution and tell the story.”

The college’s biggest challenge is one it shares with all private liberal arts colleges, Mr. Calareso said: the rising cost of tuition. Anna Maria’s annual cost of $38,000 for tuition, fees, room and board compares favorably with similar colleges, but even with a generous financial aid program, Mr. Calareso said, he worries about pricing a college education out of the reach of Anna Maria’s prospective families.